From Submit to Submitted via Submission: On Lexical Rules in Large-Scale Lexicon Acquisition

TL;DR

This paper investigates the role of lexical rules in large-scale semi-automatic lexicon building, demonstrating their benefits and costs through experiments on English and Spanish finance corpora.

Contribution

It provides an analysis of lexical rules' effectiveness and challenges in large-scale lexicon acquisition, highlighting their justified use despite costs.

Findings

Lexical rules facilitate large-scale lexicon acquisition

Semi-automatic output checking remains necessary

Large-scope lexical rules are justified despite costs

Abstract

This paper deals with the discovery, representation, and use of lexical rules (LRs) during large-scale semi-automatic computational lexicon acquisition. The analysis is based on a set of LRs implemented and tested on the basis of Spanish and English business- and finance-related corpora. We show that, though the use of LRs is justified, they do not come cost-free. Semi-automatic output checking is required, even with blocking and preemtion procedures built in. Nevertheless, large-scope LRs are justified because they facilitate the unavoidable process of large-scale semi-automatic lexical acquisition. We also argue that the place of LRs in the computational process is a complex issue.